Ethnic Balance Blasted Wpb Forum Cites School Problems

November 14, 1986|By DAVID GIBSON, Staff Writer

KEY BISCAYNE -- An unbalanced racial and ethnic mix in West Palm Beach public schools can stand in the way of efforts to stablize and revitalize declining city neighborhoods, some participants in a forum of 100 community and government leaders said Thursday.

The unbalanced ratios in the schools encourages ``white flight`` from existing neighborhoods and discourages whites from choosing those areas, said John Linstroth, president of Perini Land and Development Co., one of the major residential developers in the city.

With the reluctance of the young middle-class white families to move into neighborhoods where schools are overwhelmingly black, the city is losing a major slice of the market of people needed to reinvest in older neighborhoods.

``The No. 1 liability of the city of West Palm Beach is the failure of the School Board to maintain integration in the schools,`` Linstroth said.

Linstroth said that in marketing a recent development in the city, the company targeted young couples without children and retired people.

``We knew they had no children. The school district we were building in was 90 percent black, and frankly, that is an intolerable level (for white families),`` he said. ``I`m not saying that is right but that is what our experience tells us.``

The forum is being conducted by the Florida Atlantic University-Florida International University Joint Center for Environmental and Urban Problems.

A background paper prepared by the center for forum participants shows that 13 of the 14 public schools in the city do not reflect the population proportions of the city, which is approximately 65 percent white, 25 percent black and 10 percent Hispanic.

Half of the public schools in the city are more than 50 percent black and one is more than 50 percent Hispanic, according to the report.

While agreeing with Linstroth that the imbalance is a liability, other people are not as quick to place all of the blame on the school system.

The racial composition of the schools is a reflection of the composition of the neighborhoods, especially in the elementary schools, said James Daniels, deputy superintendent of schools.

``Most people want neighborhood schools. If you have a black neighborhood, the schools are going to be predominantly black.

``It`s a problem, but I don`t think it is a problem that the schools can solve,`` he said.